ATi RADEON XPRESS 200 Series: AMD Platform Chipsets
How we configured our test systems: When configuring our test systems for this review, the first thing we did was enter the system BIOS and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High-Performance Defaults." In the case of the RADEON XPRESS 200, we also set some BIOS options as per ATi's recommendation for optimal IGP performance. The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows XP Professional (SP2) was installed. When the installation was complete, we hit the Windows Update site and downloaded all of the available updates. Then we installed all of the necessary drivers and removed Windows Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating and System Restore were also disabled, and we set up a 768MB permanent page file on the same partition as the Windows installation. Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance," installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drives, and ran all of the tests...
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| SYSTEM 1: AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz) ATI "Bullhead" ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 2x512MB Corsair PC3200 CL2 (2-2-2-5) NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 IGP On-Board 10/100 / 1000 Ethernet On-Board Audio WD "Raptor" 36GB Hard Drive 10,000 RPM SATA Windows XP Pro SP2 (Fully Patched) NVIDIA Forceware v66.81 ATI Catalyst v4.10 DirectX 9.0c |
SYSTEM 2: AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 (2.4GHz) AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz) AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (2.4GHz) MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum NVIDIA nForce 3 Ultra Chipset 2x512MB Corsair PC3200 CL2 (2-2-2-5) NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT On-Board 10/100 / 1000 Ethernet On-Board Audio WD "Raptor" 36GB Hard Drive 10,000 RPM SATA Windows XP Pro SP2 (Fully Patched) NVIDIA Forceware v66.81 DirectX 9.0c |
SYSTEM 3: Pentium 4 560 3.6GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz ASUS P5AD2 i925X Chipset 2x512MB Corsair DDR2 533 CL3 NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT On-Board 10/100 /1000 Ethernet On-Board Audio WD "Raptor" 36GB Hard Drive 10,000 RPM SATA Windows XP Pro SP2 (Fully Patched) NVIDIA Forceware v66.81 DirectX 9.0c |
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We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA 2004, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. SANDRA consists of a set of information and diagnostic utilities that can provide a host of useful information about your hardware and operating system. We ran four of the built-in subsystem tests that comprise the SANDRA 2004 suite (CPU, Multimedia, Memory and File System). All of these tests were run with our Athlon 64 4000+ processor set to its default clock speeds of 2.4GHz (12 x 200MHz).
;) CPU Test Using IGP |
;) Multimedia Test Using IGP |
;) Memory Test Using IGP |
;) File System Test Using IGP |
;) CPU Test Using Discreet GFX |
;) Multimedia Test Using Discreet GFX |
;) Memory Test Using Discreet GFX |
;) File System Test Using Discreet GFX |
Throughout this review, we ran two sets of benchmarks with the RADEON XPRESS 200; one set using the built-in IGP and one using a discreet graphics card. As you can see, using the IGP had virtually no impact on the CPU Arithmetic and Multimedia tests. And the file system benchmark didn't show any variation either. In the Memory Bandwidth benchmark, however, using the IGP did have a measurable affect on performance. When using the IGP, memory bandwidth dropped by about 200MB/s.
